James Peter Janisch

If you ask James to quote the title of this post, he'll do it in a passable Nigel Tufnel accent. In fact his general ability to do accents is rather good, cue – g'day mate. It's been a year for all of us. In spite of the difficulties he has remained the most amazing young […]

As I write this, James has one more day as a young man in a single digit. From tomorrow he is going to be in double digits. It's a significant development in anyone's life. And my youngest son has reached it. COVID has had a huge impact on all school kids, James is no exception.

Today James has spent 256 days in a COVID world. Roughly half of the 366 days in this year have been spent in lockdown. It's not a year that many of us will forget. However what this year has given us is an insight into how James works when he is not at school. The

Blink and you discover that your little boy has been on this planet for eight years. How on earth did that happen, it was perhaps yesterday that I was walking him to nursery school – that yesterday was two years ago. Our little boy has been in big school for two years and finishing off

James and friends.  This is a common feature of James' seven years on this planet.  Always friends and few of these friends are teddies.  James is the only one of my children who will come upstairs to my office, wade his way through the many guitars and talk to me.  He might come up to

"I can't have this because it's sugarish." Is not a statement, it's a question. Strangely, such questions tend to be only asked when it comes to sugar.  Never does he ask such a question when it comes to vegetables, mince, breakfast or beer.  And yet he defies the odds of such a sugar addiction with

It is vital that you write down what your children say before you forget it.  When it comes to looking back at the last year so much has happened that if I didn't start writing this post a few months before his birthday I might have forgotten some of the things he's done. On the

Most parents who have more than one child will tell you how different their children are. Thank goodness mine are no exception if they were I would just rehash Oliver's 4th birthday post. The two children are remarkably different. A fact I will be reiterate until I stop writing these missives. Oliver has a vivid

And were the terrible twos spectacular or what?  Perhaps a little more intense than his older brother's.  But what a child.  A wicked laugh, a true goer, someone who finds his toddlerhood a little limiting – he wants to play like his brother. What I find most surprising is how two children from the same

Two and everything's "mine". Not only is everything his but everyone else's possessions are also "mine".  And for the record, his opinions are also "mine". Not that mine is a bad thing, if you want James to eat his dinner then all you need to do is take his food away and say "mine". He